Maggie
by secretsocieties
Summary: Deep in London Below, the continuation of Richard Mayhew's life comes down to the moment the Marquis, Door, and Hunter leave him in the tunnel. Once, they came back. This time, they didn't. [AU]


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They had reached a junction: a place where three tunnels came together. Door and Hunter set off along one of them, the one that was empty of water, and they did not look back. The marquis lingered.

"You'll just have to make the best of it down here," he said to Richard, "in the sewers and the magic and the dark." And then he smiled, hugely, whitely: a gleaming grin, monumental in its insincerity. "Well - delightful to see you again. Best of luck. If you can survive for the next day or two," he confided, "you might even make it through the whole month." And with that he turned and strode off into the sewer, after Door and Hunter.

Richard leaned against a wall and listened to their footsteps, echoing away, and to the rush of the water running past on its way to the pumping stations of East London, and the sewage works. "Shit," he said. And then, to his surprise, for the first time since his father died, alone in the dark, Richard Mayhew began to cry.

He was alone in the dark for a long time. He must have fallen asleep at some time, his body simply shutting down from the shock of everything since - he wasn't even sure how long ago this had started. Since he had carried Door away from Jess, he guessed – since he saw her, even though he never should have been able to. Somewhere that ranged in distance from half the diameter of the Earth to four feet above the ceiling above his head roared an entire city that hummed and coughed through its life; and who, like a giant, displeased cat, had decided in almost a fit of malice to simply ignore him.

His eyes had long since adjusted to the dark when he awoke gasping. He was immediately aware of everything around him, denied the bliss of forgetting that comes from waking slowly. His back ached from slumping on the ground, his toes were unresponsive lumps at the ends of his feet, and his right arm had fallen painfully asleep. He sat up slowly, looking around the dark tunnel and trying to rub feeling back into his stiff limbs. He was too old for sleeping in tunnels. He would need to find somewhere safe to sleep, where he could live. It hit him again, that this was going to be his life now. Down in the sewers and the magic and the dark. He had destroyed his own life the moment he'd helped Door instead of leaving her to bleed on the sidewalk.

He didn't think he would've changed anything, if given the chance. Too much was at stake – he knew that. It was one of the few things he did know at this point. The knowledge only served to make him angry, however. It was a heavy kind of anger; the kind that would spike in his chest and made him want to start crying again, only to retreat and lurk below the surface. He scrubbed at his eyes, tired already. The water rushed by below him, tricking his weary mind into hearing footsteps running after him. He yearned for them to be real, for Door to come sprinting back out of the tunnel, breathless and real, and tug him along on the trio's impossible journey. He knew, however, that it had been a long time since they'd abandoned him and if they were going to come back, they would have already.

He pulled himself to his feet and looked around. There were three options, four if one counted the option of simply sitting on the storm drain until something larger came along and ate him. He didn't doubt the existence of things like that anymore. He glanced down at the frothing water, but it turned his stomach to look at. He could go back the way he came, but somehow he knew the market would no longer be there. He also knew that anyone who was still there would be the type of person he would need Hunter to deal with. That left the two remaining branches – the one the marquis, Door, and Hunter had disappeared down and the unknown one. He momentarily entertained the idea of following them at a distance, but dismissed it. There would be no way to catch up to them, and Hunter would hear him coming a mile away and kill him before he got close. He began walking into the darkness of the third tunnel.

As far as desperate choices went, this particular tunnel was one of the weirder ones. At this point, Richard had come to expect a certain degree of gut-wrenching strangeness from the tunnels. What he didn't expect, however, was the artwork that covered the worn brick walls. At first it was only a picture or two scattered every ten minutes of walking, but their numbers increased the farther he went. They ranged in ability from crude stick figures to huge, charcoal-shaded depictions of what could only be the above world. Cars, buildings, and an endless timeline of fashions covered the tunnel from the floor to about elbow height. He wondered if the painters were a race of subterranean Neanderthal pygmies. It was as likely as anything else in this strange world. The paintings seemed to act as some sort of pictographic history, because as he walked, time seemed to turn backwards. He watched cars grow larger and bulkier, and then disappear to lorries and horse-drawn carriages. Buildings shrank and burned, and the red paint that depicted the flames seemed to flicker. He found himself walking faster, unable to tear his eyes from the paintings. Earth's history whipped past, and he realized he was running. There was a drumming in his head that matched his footfalls. The pictures showed scenes from around the world; buildings crumpling, becoming whole, and then being built.

Magic.

The spell broke when he slammed into something waist-high that sent him sprawling. He didn't sit up immediately and focused instead on calming his pounding heart. The sewer was gone. Bricked walls had changed to craggy limestone, and the concrete walkway was smooth rock; water still rushed by, however. Gradually he came into awareness of children yelling. When he did sit up, he saw a small boy leap to his feet and take off after another shadowy figure that was already far ahead. They were both shouting, sounding terrified. Richard's heart seized and he looked fearfully into the darkness the children came from, expecting something to come charging out and eat him in a single bite. Instead, he heard a shrill, wet scream that broke off intermittently. He realized it was the sound of another child fighting valiantly to keep his or her head above the water. _This_ was something he could do.

He sprinted after the boy and the other child, whom he realized were running carefully along the edge of the tunnel and shouting down into the rushing current below. He caught up to them quickly and fell into step with the boy he'd run down. When he saw Richard, the boy gave a startled shout and pulled a switch blade from his trouser pocket. Richard ignored him; having just spotted a small head and two pale arms flailing desperately towards the middle of a body of water that was now thankfully a river instead of a sewer. The water was an icy shock that pushed the breath from his lungs as he dove, but he surfaced quickly and recovered. He hadn't swum in water this cold since moving to London, but he remembered how to breathe without panicking. The water wasn't as swift as it'd looked from the edge, but there was still an insistent current. The bottom was out of reach, and he was thankful for that. While rivers above might be relatively harmless, there was no way of knowing what sort of creatures lurked in underground waters.

He found the child easily – he or she was still shouting desperately, even as the two on the shore had fallen silent. He grabbed him or her around the waist, and the child went limp with what Richard hoped was relief, not unconsciousness. Swimming across the current was difficult with a dead weight, but he reached the side without drowning. Once there, however, he found himself faced with the dilemma of how, exactly, to get back onto solid land. The river persisted on trying to carry him away, and while he was able to find a handhold, there was no way he could hoist the child up to the others – let alone climb out himself. He glanced up, and found two pairs of brownish eyes looking down at him. The children appeared to have reached the same conclusion he had. The water was freezing and his legs were beginning to go numb, along with his fingers. He adjusted his grip and looked around for a place where the wall was lower, but while uneven at its surface it remained relatively uniform in its unreachable-ness.

The child over his shoulder stirred and seemed to regain consciousness. Small limbs twisted around him until he was able to let go and use the now free hand to take a better told on the wall. When he looked up again, only one of the children remained. He was looking over his shoulder, to some point Richard couldn't see – presumably after his friend. Richard reached up as high as he could; searching blindly for some sort of hand hold to perhaps climb out, but there was nothing. The child on his back coughed weakly, and spoke.

"Thank you for jumping," she said in a distinctly feminine voice.

"No problem," Richard grunted, shifting slightly. "I love going for swims in freezing rivers underground. Especially rivers that used to be sewers."

"You're not from down here, are you?" she seemed oddly calm about their fate, and Richard could almost detect wonder and excitement in her voice.

"Is anyone really from down here?" he asked, unwilling to discuss recent events.

"I guess not," she said, sadly. "But some people are from down here more than other people." Richard nodded, his concentration already being redirected to his numb fingers. He didn't want to think about it, but he was reaching a point where it was feasible that his fingers would simply give out and send him and the girl tumbling back into the main current. "I'm Maggie," she told him conversationally.

"Richard Mayhew," said Richard. "Do you have any ideas for getting out of this?" Before Maggie could reply, the boy leaned over the edge.

"Pail went to get a rope! You didn't think we would leave you down there, did you?" Maggie giggled and the boy smirked at him in the manner of small boys who have bested adults. Richard rolled his eyes, but there was something comforting about the fact that, even within all of the madness of his current life, small children would still be small children.

Eventually, the boy called Pail returned with a shout. He and the other boy chattered easily as they moved around where Richard could see them, but eventually a frayed end of rope dropped onto his head. Maggie grabbed it and climbed up easily, and as she disappeared he had a momentary thought that maybe these children would simply leave him clinging to the rock face. The rope stayed in place, however, and he grabbed it thankfully. Somehow the children hoisted him up, and he found his pants and shoes waiting for him along with a blanket. Maggie had already cocooned herself warmly, and she was berating the boys loudly. Apparently it had been the boy who'd stayed behind's fault that she'd ended up in the river, because he'd taken Pail's paintbrush and, in wrestling to retrieve it, Maggie had been pushed in.

"Did you paint those pictures?" Richard asked, looking at them from the corner of his eye. He hadn't forgotten the trance he'd been sucked into, and he wasn't keen to find out what would happen if he got to the beginning of the world. The paintings around him were exotic and old, but unfamiliar. He was starting to think the tunnels moved around when one wasn't looking. It wouldn't surprise him if they did.

"Some of them!" Maggie told him, watching him struggle back into his pants. His socks were soaked through and no amount of wringing would make them stop dripping, so he shoved them in his pockets and put his shoes on barefoot.

"How old are they?" Pail and the other boy shrugged, but Maggie said simply, "Old as the walls." Richard looked at her closely. All three children looked about nine or ten, but Maggie held herself like someone much older. Before he could voice another question, she declared, "We need food! I'm hungry!" Pail and the other boy cheered and grabbed for the art supplies strewn on the floor. The children raced off, and Richard was dragged along. He watched his feet carefully, stubbornly refusing to look at the paintings whizzing by. When he chanced a glance up, the young girl was watching him carefully.

The three children lived by themselves in a room-like cave about five minutes from the river. It was decorated very much like the home of supervision-free children; the walls were brightly painted but void of paintings, covered instead with cut-outs from magazines and newspapers. Fluff, stuffed animals, old clothes and pillows formed child-sized nests in various places, and there was a clear area in the centre with cracked plates and cans of paint, sticks of charcoal, and pastels. The children put an impromptu nest together and pushed Richard into it before busying themselves pulling food from corners and crannies. The other boy was introduced as Spoon, Maggie changed her clothes, and then the three sat down with him.

The food was some sort of pre-prepared soup and was thankfully meatless. Richard didn't think he wanted to eat any sort of unknown meat here. The boys talked and wrestled and spilled soup everywhere, and Maggie joined in. She acted completely normal for a homeless, lost girl that lived with two other nine-year-olds, but Richard couldn't shake the notion that she was acting for his benefit.

"So, Richamayhew," Spoon said at some point, after most of the boys' soup was either eaten or spilled down their shirts. "Where are you going to? 'Cuz you saved Maggie, so we gotta repay you. Deal for deal."

Where was he going? He couldn't go back to his London, because there wasn't a life for him there. There was no life for him here either. He didn't know anyone, didn't know codes or customs and he would end up dead by the week's end. He was saved from answering, however, because when he looked up Spoon and Pail were sound asleep. He looked at Maggie.

She was sitting cross-legged, fiddling with a bit of charcoal in silence. There was something old about her, older than the boys.

"Who are you?" Richard asked.

"I'm just Maggie," she told him, "and I'm perfectly normal."

"You're not!" he told her. He was sure of it, even though he didn't know why. "Well, you may be normal for whatever you are, but you're not human. And I think you can swim perfectly well." In the light from the fire, he could see ghostly webbings between her fingers. She sighed heavily.

"Well, yes. But I needed to get your attention."

"Why?" Richard asked. "And do the boys know? They're human, right?"

"Yes," Maggie told him, "but they're lost, and I found them. I keep them safe here and in exchange they help my keep my stories."

"What are you?" Richard asked.

"I'm Maggie. I'm the Storykeeper. I've been down here longer than most anything, and I keep every story that is told. You're on my walls somewhere. I take the little lost children who wander here, small and afraid, and I let them live here. I feed them and protect them."

"What happened to the others?" Richard asked. He imagined countless children lured here, living with this young girl until they got too old and then…

"I didn't eat them," Maggie said, indignantly, "if that's what you're thinking. Some leave, and the others die. But they don't get old. They die the same way you will, if you're not killed. I take care of my children."

It was a heady experience, talking to this child who wasn't a child. She talked maturely and held herself like an adult, but Richard knew she was older than civilization itself. Even if she looked no older than ten, she was deep and magical.

"What are you going to do to me?" he asked.

"Help you, and help myself in the process. You are needed in places that aren't here, in a very small amount of time."

"With Door," he said. "I figured."

"Yes. And I will take you there after you sleep."

And it was probably the magic, but Richard fell asleep then.

He woke to Maggie's hand on his face. The boys were still sleeping, but she didn't look like she was expecting them to wake up. They left the cave together, and started walking away from the river. His socks had dried while he slept, so his feet no longer squished. They walked through what seemed like miles of tunnels. Richard that it was no wonder his poor watch had quit – time seemed to have no meaning here, and it appeared to have taken basic concepts of geography with it. Eventually, they arrived at a stone staircase.

"Where are we?" Richard asked. Maggie patted his arm and turned to go.

"It is where you need to be, Richard Mayhew. You are the hero, and they will need you."

"Hero?" Suddenly, this didn't seem like such a great idea. "I'm no hero, Maggie!" But she was gone. He sighed and walked up the stairs. At the top, he stepped out and into what looked like a stable. Hunter was in front of him in an instant, so he had obviously caught her unaware.

"You?" Richard did have the presence of mind to be rather pleased that he had visibly surprised her.

"Yeah, sorry. Didn't mean to sneak up on you." She opened her mouth, at a loss for words, but at that moment Door began to wake. He hadn't even noticed her curled on a pile of hay, but she smelled strongly of wine.

Hunter helped her into a standing position. "Well," said Door, sleepily, "he did warn me it was strong." And then she woke up completely, very hard, very fast. She grabbed Richard's shoulder, not seeming at all surprised to see him there, pointed to the device on the wall, the snaky S with the stars surrounding it. She gasped, and looked for all the world like a small mouse that had just realized it had wandered into a cattery. "Serpentine," she said to Richard, to Hunter. "That's Serpentine's crest. We have to run – before she finds out we're here–"

"And do you think," asked a dry voice from the doorway, "that you could enter Serpentine's house without Serpentine knowing, child?"

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End file.
